Gene Amdahl

Gene Myron Amdahl (born November 16, 1922) is an American computer architect and hi-tech entrepreneur of Norwegian descent, chiefly known for his work on mainframe computers at International Business Machines (IBM) and later his own companies. He is perhaps best known for formulating Amdahl's law, a fundamental theory of parallel computing.

The IBM & Amdahl years

At IBM Amdahl worked on the IBM 704, the IBM 709, and then the Stretch project, the basis for the IBM 7030. He left IBM in December 1955 but returned in September 1960 (after working at Ramo Wooldridge and at Aeronutronic). On his return he worked on the System/360 family architecture and became an IBM Fellow in 1965, and head of the ACS Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. He left IBM again in September 1970, after his ideas for computer development were rejected, and set up Amdahl Corporation in Sunnyvale, Calif. with aid from Fujitsu.

Related Topics:
IBM 704 - IBM 709 - IBM 7030 - December - 1955 - September - 1960 - Ramo Wooldridge - Aeronutronic - System/360 - IBM Fellow - 1965 - Menlo Park, California - 1970 - Amdahl Corporation - Sunnyvale, Calif. - Fujitsu

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Competing with IBM in the mainframe market the company manufactured "plug-compatible" mainframes, shipping its first machine in 1975 - the Amdahl 470 V6, a less expensive, more reliable and faster replacement for the System 370/165. By purchasing an Amdahl 470 and plug-compatible peripheral devices from third-party manufacturers, customers could now run S/360 applications without buying actual IBM hardware. Amdahl also developed a streamlined version of IBM's VM operating system software, further increasing performance. By 1979 Amdahl Corporation had sold over a US$ billion of V6 and V7 mainframes and had over 6,000 employees worldwide. The corporation went on to distribute an IBM-plug-compatible front-end processor (the 4705) as well as high-performance disk drives, both jointly developed with Fujitsu engineers.

Related Topics:
Plug-compatible - 1975 - Amdahl 470 - VM - Operating system - Software - Front-end processor - Disk drive

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